first of all, i’ve updated the original civic societies post — all the way from yesterday! — to include africa, latin america, and india, so you might want to check that out.

and now … drum roll, please! … the totals for all the countries in the survey (that’s the world values survey, 2005-08 wave) — including a GLOBAL TOTAL. (see the previous post for why anybody should care.) again, answering the question(s):

“Now I am going to read out a list of voluntary organizations; for each one, could you tell me whether you are a member, an active member, an inactive member or not a member of that type of organization?

and, again, these numbers represent people who responded ACTIVE MEMBER:

below are a whole bunch of charts illustrating these numbers. some interesting points:

– the middle east/maghreb and eastern europe are consistently at the bottom, swapping last place here and there — mostly the middle east/maghreb occupies the total losers position in the civic society rankings. arabs and eastern europeans seemingly just don’t give a f*ck.

– to my pleasant surprise, african nations always scored above the global total and very often near the top. whatever you wanna say about africans, they are civically engaged. good for them!

– western europeans (either anglos or french/germanics) occupy the top spot almost half the time (4 out of 9); indians three times; africans twice.

mostly the middle east/maghreb occupies the total losers position in the civic society rankings. arabs and eastern europeans seemingly just don’t give a f*ck.

I’ve been wondering about this for Eastern Europe, tried reading for example this, this, and this (last 2 are PDFs), but everyone just assumes Communism (1) is the only reason for E. Europe’s lack of civil society, and (2) just fell on these countries out of the sky.

I know Greying Wanderer disagrees, but I can’t shake the idea that there could be something in a people that makes them more susceptible to adopting communism and the total civil-society-extinction that goes with it. Could it be ethnic? Family-structure-related? In-breeding? Am really curious about this. [I know the HBD Chick Inbreeding In Europe Tour will make a stop in the Slavic lands eventually… ; )]

but, then, we should keep in mind that environment does affect people — both individuals and populations — as well, so no doubt living in a communistic (or despotistic) regime for a couple of generations left an impact on people. at the very least, communistic systems tend to play merry h*ll with the economy, which just throws everything out of whack, and suddenly people have to do whatever it takes to survive, etc., etc.

anyway — all i mean to say is that there are feedback systems in life — genes to behavior to culture and back to genes again (because culture is a part of our environment).

@m.g. – “Could it be ethnic? Family-structure-related? In-breeding?”

as winnie the pooh would say — yes. (~_^)

@m.g. – “I know the HBD Chick Inbreeding In Europe Tour will make a stop in the Slavic lands eventually…”

yes, eventually! but, to be honest, prolly sometime after the new year (ack!). suddenly, christmas is right around the corner and i feel there is so much to do! presents to make, plans to finalize, christmas decorations to be put up, some serious baking to be done. THERE’S NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY! (~_^)

I can’t shake the idea that there could be something in a people that makes them more susceptible to adopting communism and the total civil-society-extinction that goes with it.

But communism’s existence in Russia/E.Euro ultimately came down to revolution, violent struggle, conflict, and war.

Think about how different Europe would be today had the Germans won WW2. The dominant ideological character of Europe would be quite different from what it actually is right now. But this difference would largely be due to the outcome of a war.

The Indian response pool in the WVS has to be taken with caution because of how incredibly complicated that country is and consequently how difficult it is to adequately survey a representative population sample, but that tedious qualification out of the way, the high labor union participation number strikes me as interesting and not what I would’ve guessed (though that guess isn’t informed by much).

@mr. epigone – “The Indian response pool in the WVS has to be taken with caution because of how incredibly complicated that country is and consequently how difficult it is to adequately survey a representative population sample….”

yeah, absolutely. i didn’t check to see who was surveyed in india. i can do that, though. first, some dinner….

yes, that is true. but you have to admit that the slavs have a sort-of socio-political pattern that they seem to stick to: absolute/dictatorial leader (tzar, communist tyrant) at the top with empoverished masses (serfs, proletariat) at the bottom. emmanuel todd thought this had to do with their family structure — i think that’s prolly part of it, but that there’s more to it than just that. (todd thinks of it from a sort-of psychological/freudian p.o.v. — i’m thinking about it more from a sociobiological p.o.v.)

wrt russia, specifically — the communist revolution in russia, and the early years of the communist regime there, did have a lot of jewish involvement as well, so what happened during the first few decades of communism in that country wasn’t only a slavic thing. just sayin’.

@audacious epigone – “The Indian response pool in the WVS has to be taken with caution because of how incredibly complicated that country is and consequently how difficult it is to adequately survey a representative population sample….”

i looked up the details of who was surveyed in the india … uh … survey, and they seem to have done a pretty good job of spreading the questions around the country and amongst different classes and religious groups. still, they seem to have surveyed only ca. 2000 individuals — not very many for a nation of 1.who-knows-how-many billion people.

[…] line in Western Europe is historically unique in the world in a variety of ways, giving the much praised and lamented traits of Northwestern Europeans. In addition to the late marriage that was the […]

[…] problems with “lady b”/clannish societies, and that is that, while they generally do not want to contribute to the common pool (to varying degrees), they are VERY happy to TAKE from the common pool as much as possible to the […]

[…] There are however a couple of places that don’t seem to fit as well. Most poignant of these is sub-Saharan Africa. HBD Chick’s hypothesis doesn’t cover much of Africa, especially the non-Muslim parts. It’s unclear if the historic mating among non-Muslim Blacks was particularly consanguineous (though it was, and remains in many places, polygynous). However, as we clearly know, sub-Saharans do behave like considerably clannish people in some ways, yet a lot more like typical outbreeders in other ways. […]

[…] the arab and arabized world ranks very low in surveys of civic behaviors. the middle east/maghreb typically vies with eastern europe for bottom place in the rankings when it comes to people joining voluntary associations. see this previous post: civic societies ii. […]